Guests at this year’s St. Symeon Food and Culture Fair will see a church interior completely filled with large iconographic murals. Church tours will be ongoing throughout the event. The fair, now in its 6th year, will continue to offer baked goods, gifts, and hot food items such as Greek donuts, homemade pierogi, Ukrainian borsch, and sausage roll sandwiches at its open air marketplace on the church grounds.
Cultural Programs
“The Food and Culture Fair is our annual open house,” explained Fr. Alexander Fecanin, the priest at St. Symeon. “This year is special because the fair is actually on our patronal feast day, October 12.” The church’s patron is St. Symeon the New Theologian, a 10th Century Byzantine monk and poet. St. Symeon is one of three saints with the title “Theologian,” the other two being St. John the Apostle and St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Fr. Alexander will give a talk about St. Symeon at 10:30 a.m. inside the church.
The choir concert is always a highlight of the Food and Culture Fair. The renowned St. Symeon Orthodox Church Choir, under the direction of Subdeacon Stephen Ritchey, will present a concert of sacred music at 11 a.m. titled “This is the Day That the Lord Has Made,” featuring some of the church’s most beloved hymns.
“Each Sunday in the Orthodox Church is a celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Sdn. Stephen explained. “This concert features selections of hymnography from the weekly services of the Church’s liturgical cycle, specifically from the Saturday evening service of Great Vespers and the Sunday morning services of Matins and the Divine Liturgy,” he added.
At 1 p.m., Protodeacon Ephraim Rivers will give a talk inside the church explaining the ancient Christian tradition of sacred art and the role of icons in Orthodox Christianity. This popular annual talk is updated each year and always includes new and different information, so previous attendees will learn something new this year.
Marketplace
The St. Symeon Food and Culture Fair has been an annual event (except for 2020) since 2018. In addition to the cultural programs offered inside the church, the event features an open air market where guests can purchase baked goods and gifts from a variety of world cultures. Each year, church members work in teams to create market booths that loosely coincide with the different ethnic backgrounds of the congregation.
This year, the always-popular Slavic booth has been renamed “Babushka’s Kitchen” in honor of the church’s beloved Ukrainian babushka, Lydia Landar, who makes the borsch for the event in addition to other foods. The Slavic tea from a samovar, as well as homemade kompot (a traditional Slavic fruit drink), will be offered in a booth separate from Babushka’s Bakery under the banner “The Slavic Tea Room.”
Also, Cafe Europa will be expanded this year and include homemade French macarons in addition to favorites such as Irish soda bread and Italian wedding cookies. The other market booths will return as well: The Balkan Bakery, Middle Eastern Market, and Southern Sweets and Savories. Guests at this year’s Food and Culture Fair will also find made-to-order loukoumades, or fried Greek honey puffs, in the Opa Kabana booth.
The event will also feature sausage roll sandwiches, homemade pierogi and Ukrainian borsch as hot lunch options. The pierogi are Slavic dumplings filled with potato, cheese and onion. “We make our pierogi entirely from scratch,” explained Niki May, the event’s chairperson. “We are getting ready to spend about a week together making as many pierogi as we can,” May added. Pierogi will be served hot accompanied by caramelized onions and sour cream and will also be available frozen by the dozen.
Guests can enjoy their food purchases on site in the church fellowship hall and outdoors on the grounds and also stock up on baked goods to take home. There will be music in the fellowship hall for guests to enjoy, and the church’s gift shop will be open, offering books, choir CDs, icons, toys and other goods for sale.
St. Symeon Orthodox Church is located at 3101 Clairmont Avenue in Birmingham. It is a parish of the Orthodox Church in America, a jurisdiction of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Regular weekly services include Vespers on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and the Divine Liturgy on Sundays at 10 a.m. A full schedule of services is available at StSymeon.com. Services are in English and visitors are welcome.
Photos are available here.
